The Land of the Lotus Eaters
by Nadie2
Summary: In this story SG-1 meet the Furlings. It is also 100% cannon. How can this be? They didn't exactly tell anyone. This story forces them to think about the nature of reality, and to confront their deepest desires. Has some Sam/Jack, but is cannon.
1. Echo

_In the two hundredth episode Carter and Daniel tease Mitchel about the mission report that Mitchel never read. There is such a report, but Mitchel isn't the only one who never read it. It's not exactly what you'd call official, and it never made its way through the proper chain of command. It exists only in safety deposit box in a bank in Minnesota. It sits in a box with other trinkets too classified to be left out and about, too meaningful to throw away, and too damned painful to keep within sight._

_ There is the hat he wore when he kissed her in the time loop. There is the transcripts of the whole za'tarc incident. The transcripts he was supposed to take from Fraya directly to General Hammond. The one's that never quite made it to the General's desk… And there is the cup she drank from on the planet that made her take of her…_

_ There was a reason he kept them in the safety deposit box. They were best forgotten._

_ It's been so long since the mission no one can be sure if the others have really forgotten what happened on the mission. And to be perfectly honest no one was ever sure of what "really" happened on the mission to begin with._

_ But, if their memories are all pieced together you can come to the truth, if not exactly reality._

The second their bodies re-integrated on the other side of the event horizon they could tell that something was wrong. Or not wrong, so much as… confusing. Four jaws dropped, and to make a Jaffa jaw drop is something impressive indeed. Carter and O'Neill give each other a quick glance before staring straight ahead.

"O'Neill, I think I am experiencing the paranormal experience you refer to as a 'ghost', Teal'c says.

"You see Sha're, too?" Daniel asks.

"The perception I'm experiencing is not of your late wife, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c replies.

"Ah… I'm not seeing a dead person, but the person I'm seeing definitely can't be here," Sam explains.

"Ok, let's call this mission. Something here is causing us all to hallucinate. Dial us home Daniel."

Daniel nods his head and moves toward the DHD.

Suddenly a voice stops them all, "Why do you appear frightened?"

"Well, Ma'am," Jack replies dryly, "It might have something to do with you - the disembodied voice."

"By definition a disembodied voice cannot hurt you. So it should not cause you to be fearful," the voice replies.

"We're just confused as to why we're seeing things that aren't real," Daniel says.

"Why would that confuse you? From what I've gathered from the working of your eyes, nothing you see is real. It is merely the reflection light coming from something that exists," the voice says.

"Right, but those objects are real," Sam points out, "They exist. We're seeing an image of something that really, and truly exists."

"What do you mean by 'exists'?" the voice asks.

"I mean it has a physical form. You could reach out and touch it," Sam explains.

"Look Ma'am," Jack says glaring at his second in command, "as fascinating as this philosophical discussion is, we'd really like to know why we can't see you."

Suddenly a woman appears to all four eyes at once. She's a strange mix of people they have known. She has Sam's hair color, but Sha're's curls. She's got Jack's shoulders and Dray'auc's arms. And for some odd reason, General Hammond's nose.

"Is this form pleasing to you all?" she asks.

"Why don't you just show up as you are," Jack says annoyed.

"I haven't had a physical form for so long I've quite forgotten what I look like. In fact, it's been almost a million years since I encountered someone who requited me to take a physical form of any kind. The Asgard are of course above demanding physical form."

"You know the Asgard?" Daniel asks excitedly.

"Yes, actually we're good friends with Thor," Jack says proudly.

"It appears the Supreme Allied Commander has lowered his standards considerably since I knew him," she replies.

Sam chuckles glancing at her commanding officer to see how this affects his pride. It took quite a hit from being called "young" by the Nox, and this is considerably worse.

"Who exactly are you?" Jack asks pulling off his sun glasses to stare at her.

"We are a very old race. We called ourselves the Anasi long ago. The Nox call us the Elders, and the Asgard call us the Furlings.

"The Furlings!" Jack says grinning.

"Ah… could you tell me exactly why you're torturing us with, uh… people we love?" Daniel asks.

She looks around, confused, at the people around her, "Torture? I gave you the deepest desire of your heart."

"But… they're not real, and it's just… reminding us of things we don't have," Daniel stammers.

Daniel glances over as Sha're disappears. He's glad. He spent enough years looking at someone who looked like Sha're but wasn't, when Sha're was possessed by a Goa'uld. But this one didn't just look like her. She acted like her too. Even held her head like her.

"Would any of the rest of you like me to get rid of the desires of your heart?' she asks.

Jack and Sam shake their head ever so slightly as Sam blushes a bit. Teal'c says stoically, "I would prefer to continue to see the image of the one I have loved."

"Who are you?" Sam asks.

"Names… we've had no use for those for much longer than we've had no use for physical bodies. How silly you humans are," she giggles. "I can't remember the one I used to be called by. Would one of you mind terribly if you named me?"

"For a voice without body… Echo," Daniel says.

"I don't have a voice any more than I have a body," she says with a laugh, "But I like the name Echo well enough."

"Ok, Echo," Jack says giving Daniel a bit of a glare, "Can you please explain to me exactly how you can be real with neither a body nor a voice. And you'd better make it convincing or else I'm going to have to go back to the hallucination explanation."

"Sir, we can't all be hallucinating the same thing," Sam points out.

"Well we seem to have different hallucinations as well as a shared one," Daniel points out at the same time Teal'c says, "Urgo."

"Oh, no, no, please tell me you're not another fun seeking microchip!" Jack exclaims.

Echo giggles, "That memory delights as well as befuddles."

"You have access to our memories?" Jack says nervously.

"Of course," Echo says with a sigh, "Your memories are a part of who you are, aren't they? How could we have communion with you if we didn't know who you are."

"Before we get to this 'communion' we'd like to get to know _you_ a little better," Jack says.

"For instance, how can you be alive without a body?" Sam asks.

"I can see why you think that a body is necessary for life. That isn't quite true though. But individuality needs physically bodies. But once that has formed - which only takes a few years really - there is no need for a physical body. We shed ours long ago. They took such effort to be maintained! Air, water, food, and sex! Constant demands! We hardly had time for reason or art! How is a society expected to advance when it's still tied to its animal nature?"

"I don't know I happen to like all of those things…" Jacks says, throwing out yet another of the jokes only his second in command actually finds humorous.

"So what exactly are you now? The Ancients… they Ascended… became pure energy. Did you do something similar?" Daniel asked.

"We are familiar with the process. In fact, a few of our people chose that path. Just as some of them chose to come with us on our path. Our path requires no meditation, no peace, and no faith. Nor did we have to wait until our bodies evolved. We used technology to help us on the way. We created machines that granted our wishes. At first… poor imitations of the real world. Ones we used briefly and left to care for our physical needs. As time went on, the machines became better. More intense, more sensual than what you think of as "real". Eventually we had no need for our physical bodies. No need for the machines. The world we had created was beyond them. Bigger than them. We had created our own universe, better than the "real" one could ever be."

"So we're in a utopian virtual reality?" Sam asks.

Echo pauses. "Yes, but the virtual reality world is now integrated into our atmosphere. It has no need to be sustained by machines or anything more than a few lightning strokes a year."

"Well that's just plain amazing," Sam says, her jaw dropping.

"We've had many millennia," Echo says bashfully.

"So there are no people on the planet," Jack says, swirling his finger around.

"Ah Jack… I'm not sure Echo doesn't fit the definition of person better than we do," Daniel says, staring into her eyes.

"Oh for crying out loud! Are you all missing the fact that she is not real? Fiction? A figment of our imaginations? A hallucination?"

"Sir, she's real. She's just not physical," Sam says.

"O'Neill, would not these people make powerful alias?" Teal'c asks.

"I don't know. How useful is someone without a body? It's not as if she can actually DO anything," Jack asks.

His teammates stares at him in shock. But Echo laughs. "Don't scold him. Bluntness is what it means to be Jack. It's his uniqueness. It is something we don't have enough of yet."

"Well you can't have mine, I'm using it," Jack replies.

"How exactly are you… influencing our brains?" Sam asks.

"They are nothing more than electricity. It's just a matter of transforming the outgoing wish signals into an incoming visual signals so that you believe you're seeing it," Echo responds.

"So, we can have whatever we wish for? Sam, what exactly would this big honking space gun look like?" Jack asks.

"What space gun?" she asks.

"The one we're always looking for of course," he replies.

"Ah, so that's what we've been doing for the last five years?" Sam asks.

"Yep, now that you're on the same page as the rest of us we'll probably get it accomplished in thirty seconds, squint and wish," he says.

"You will have no need for weapons here, and you cannot take what we give to another place," Echo says sounding bored. "The violence takes time to work out of you people. Some of you will take…much time," she says with a sigh.

"We're not staying for, 'much time'," Jack says, not to Echo, but to his vision. His eyes go softer as he looks at his vision.

Sam casts the figure she can't see a jealous glance. What is Jack's deepest hope? His son? Sarah? She is jealous, and she hates this about herself. It's irrational to begrudge him even an image of the happiness that was ripped from him.

"Surely once you know how wonderful this place is you will never want to leave," Echo replies, smiling at Jack.

"We appreciate your hospitality," says the diplomatic Daniel, "But you have to understand there are some serious things happening in the universe right now. There are a lot of people whose lives are at risk each and every day."

"All are welcome here. Space is infinite," Echo says.

"So, you're suggesting we take the entire universe to live in lala land with you?"Jack asks in shock.

"The only way to defeat evil is to deny it battle," Echo replies.

"A friend of mine said that once," Daniel says softly.

"So, Ms. Echo, your plan is to play ostrich for the rest of eternity?" Jack asks.

"Play ostrich?" Echo quarries.

"It's an Earth phrase that means to ignore the bad things going on around you. He means that you're, uh… avoiding the state of the universe instead of facing it directly."

"Yes, we are playing ostrich, it comes with wisdom," Echo says, "Come."

"I've, uh… been trying to change my… hallucination or whatever you call her, and I… can't," Jack stammers.

Sam schools her face, hoping he won't see how much she wanted the hallucination to be a boy, a little boy.

"Why would you want to change her?" Echo laughs, "She's what you really want."

"It's a… particularly awkward situation," Jack stammers.

Echo smiles, "You people are so quaint. I have forgotten. Long ago we, too, worried about hurting one another's feelings. Strange times… I'll try to remember the things we used to do. Until then, come. We have foods better than what you have dreamt of yet. Better than you could dream of until you've been dreaming for many lifetimes."

"So we can sort of share dreams?" Daniel asks.

"Is this sharing voluntary?" Sam asks, suddenly worried.

Jack looks at her curiously. "Who do you see, Carter?"

She shakes her head.

"If you prefer, the visions can be kept private," Echo says, nodding, "And I see that you prefer."

A village grows around them. Rustic log cabins, yellow kitchens, beautiful tapestries and art, and doors trimmed in gold. Familiar to each, but foreign and delightful too.

"Which house will we eat at?" Daniel asks uncertainly.

"Any one you choose," Echo says with the sort of laugh we might use if someone was asking how to walk.

The enter one, and find a table prepared for them. They don't recognize any of the dishes, except to determine that the first is a kind of brothy soup, and the last is some sort of fluffy cake. But each taste is more unique, more intense than anything they've ever tasted. Each bite is different. Each one uses taste buds they've never used - never had until Echo imagined them right into their mouths.

For a lifetime they'd been dealing with sweet and salty, bitter and savory. Four tastes combining into everything they'd ever tasted. And now the world had opened to new tastes. Five, ten, a hundred. They combined in a thousand, a million, a billion new flavors.

They ate as long as they wanted. The pleasant feeling of being full came at the usual time. But the unpleasant feeling of being stuffed did not arrive.

After eating for hours Jack leans back. The sensation of smoking overcomes him without smoke in the air. He'd forgotten how much he missed it. Sara had begged him to give up smoking the day she'd found out she was pregnant. He'd never managed it. Not after Charlie was born, either.

But after Charlie died… it was just another fatherly failing. And after Charlie's death he didn't really have a reason to stay alive - so stopping smoking wasn't a priority. But after Abydos... After that, there was a reason to live, and he stopped smoking again.

"I assume imaginary cigarettes don't come with cancer?" he asks.

Sam looks at him in shock, "You SMOKE?"

He grins, "Haven't in years, Carter."

"Well do you think it's a good plan?" Sam asks nervously.

"What's the harm?" Jack asks with a shrug.

"You know. I've always wanted to try…" Daniel says.

"Daniel!" Sam scolds, as Daniel starts coughing uncontrollably.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you to smoke properly?" Jack asks with a laugh.

"I thought there were no consequences," Daniel chokes.

"There are consequences. They may be different than your consequences, but they still exist," Echo says.

"I would like to experience earth alcohol," Teal'c informs Echo.

"T?" Jack queries.

"Am I correct in assuming that it will not injure my symbiote?" Teal'c asks slowly.

Echo nods, and Teal'c makes an awful face.

"Smooth?" Jack asks.

Sam locks eyes with Echo. Echo nods, and Sam gets a sensual grin on her face. The boys fidget.

"Ah… Major? What exactly are you doing?" Jack says nervously.

"Riding my bike really fast," she responds.

"Phew," Daniel says awkwardly.

Sam peals an eye open and glares at him.

They sit for a while enjoying various strong sensory experiences.

"Sir, I really don't think this is the right time for it," Sam says suddenly.

"Ah, what is it a bad time for, exactly, Major?" Jack asks.

Sam turns toward him and all the color in her face drains, "Nothing sir!"

Jack tilts his head at her grinning, "Me?"

"No!" she exclaims.

"What's happening?" Daniel asks.

"Were you unaware that Major Carter and O'Neill were experiencing hallucinations of one another?" Teal'c asks.

"Really? Deepest desire?" Daniel says.

"I did not say my hallucination was Carter," Jack mumbles.

"Sir, it's alright. It's not like you have control over that," Sam says blushing.

Daniel laughs.

"Could you not be a junior high student right now?" Jack grumbles.

Echo nods, "Take your walk then."

"I thought that you could just make us feel like we were walking," Jack says snidely.

Sam tilted her head. Jack was getting more sarcastic. Less comfortable.

"You could of course have the conversation with your doubles, but it wouldn't have the same effect. You certainly wouldn't be the first couple to have chosen to love mere images of each other."

"We don't…" Jack says. He stands up, and starts to walk out of the room. Sam doesn't move. "You coming, Carter?" he asks, suddenly sounding insecure.

She jumps up and falls into step next to him. They don't say anything for a while though.

"This place makes me nervous," Jack mutters.

"Yeah, well at least you seem able to tell the difference between the real me, and the fake me. It's much less awkward. And how exactly can you tell us apart?" she asks.

He looks at her with a smile on her face.

"Sir!" she exclaims reproachfully.

"What?" he asks, sounding offended.

"She's not wearing regulation BDUs is she?" Sam asks suspiciously.

"No," Jack says, not giving his vision so much as a glance.

"She is wearing…something?" Sam asks tentatively.

"Relax major, she's fully clothed," he says in an uneasy tone. Then he looks Sam right in the eye, "They're just maternity clothes."

Sam doesn't speak for a long time, "She's pregnant, then." It's a statement, not a question.

"I guess I figured out how to get two wishes for the price of one," he admits with uncharacteristic honesty, looking anywhere but Sam.

"My hallucination wears your clothes - mostly. I don't know how I missed it before. I'll just have to look at his finger," she says softly.

"She's got that too," he confesses.

"We've avoided talking about this a long time," she says.

"And we still have almost nothing to say," he grumbles. "Because we aren't staying. So we might as well never get attached to these… visions of what isn't."

"Unless," she says.

He glances at her quickly, "You don't want to leave it in the room anymore?" he asks, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.

"I don't know… The options are scary. But doing nothing is sometimes… unbearable," she admits. In the silence she starts to fidget, something Carter rarely does unless she's in front of a camera.

"I know, but the thing is... We can't actually even talk about it. Not until…we've decided. But how can we decide without talking about it?" he asks.

"We could talk to them about it," she says.

"I like it Carter. Technically obeying, while functionally breaking the rules. But we don't really need to. We certainly know what each other wants. And we know why we've decided not to take it. Unless one of us changes our minds, I don't know what we have to discus," he says, kicking a rock.

"And this only makes the whole thing suck more," Sam says.

"Someday," he mutters, almost under his breath.

"Yes, sir. Someday."

He turns suddenly to his other side. "Are you okay?"

"What's wrong with her?" Sam asks worriedly.

"She's… in labor."

"Oh dear!" Sam exclaims, "We have to do something. We have to help her."

"She'll be fine. Women have babies every day."

"Still, we'd better get her back. Do you need help?" she asks awkwardly.

"She's managing," he says, giving her a smile, "Pretending that it doesn't hurt."

"It probably hurts less than a Goa'uld pain stick," the real Sam mutters.

"I don't know. I only have Sara's labor to go by, and she was no soldier. But my guess is it is WAY more painful than a Goa'uld pain stick."

"I don't think you're comforting her," Sam points out.

Jack smiles at the wail of his hallucination. "You are right about that."


	2. Image

"Danny boy, you have to help Sam!" Jack exclaims.

Daniel is surprised to hear him say "Sam" instead of "Carter". He jumps up and looks at Sam.

"Not me, the invisible one," Sam says, pointing to Jack's arm. "She's in labor."

"Labor," Daniel says slowly in shock. He turns to Jack with a grin on his face, "You knocked up your hallucination?"

"I married her first," Jack mumbles.

Daniel's grin gets bigger.

"Focus, Daniel! She is in pain," Jack says.

"You know she isn't real, right?" Daniel says, and it's meant to be sarcastic, but it's really not. Because they are all beginning to lose their grip with what is real and what isn't. "It's the island of the lotus eaters," he says in shock. "It's from Greek mythology. See one of the first stops Odysseus made was the Island of the lotus-eaters. A lotus is a type of flower. And these people, that's all they ate. And it made them sleep all the time, and in their sleep they dreamt that all of their dreams had come true. They only woke up to eat more lotus flowers. It was so nice there that the men wanted to stay forever."

"But they didn't?" Jack asks.

"No, Odysseus saw visions of the horrible journey in front of them. He knew it would be awful. He knew they could die. But he woke up anyway, and carried each and every one of his men off the island," Daniel says.

"Well, no one better be afraid to pull an Odysseus if we lose it. But right now, you'd better deliver my… the baby," Jack says, blushing as he makes a motion of lowering a person onto the floor.

Daniel kneels down next to him, and puts his hands out as if he was going to catch a baby.

"You're a mile away," Jack says, laughing.

Daniel moves closer. "Too close," Jack says with a flinch.

"Jeez, I'm sorry Sam," Daniel says, pulling his hands back as if they were on fire.

Sam just laughs. Jack glares at her.

"Ah… Jack? If I'm supposed to deliver an invisible baby, you're going to have to tell me if you see a baby," Daniel says.

"Yeah… there's a head," Jack says, bending down next to him. "If you put your hands right here, you'll be able to catch her."

"Her?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, we found out gender as soon as we could. And we've already named her. Grace Lynn."*

Sam smiles.

Jack looks up at her nervously when he senses the long pause. "You don't like the name?"

"No, I love that name. I've… thought about naming my daughter that for a long time. But there is no way you could have known that unless you read my junior high diary."

He smiles.

"You didn't did you, Sir?"

"Hell no, Carter, but I knew you'd like the name. I knew it as soon as she said it. I… Carefully, Daniel, support her neck."

"I think maybe the person who can actually see her should be the one to do it," Daniel says.

Sam bends down on the floor. "I see her," she says, in an awed voice.

"What?" both men ask in shock, looking at each other.

"I see Grace. I've got this," she nods to Daniel. He moves aside, and she takes the tiny baby in her arms. She tries not to laugh at the irony that she just delivered her own baby.

"She's beautiful," Sam says.

"Well, she looks like a newborn," Jack says, "She's wrinkled and pointed and bloody."

"She changed right before my eyes," Sam says, looking at Jack, startled.

"Tell me what she looks like to you," Jack prompts.

"She's got your eyes. Nothing more than peach fuzz on top of her head. She's got this sweet little face all squeezed together like a kiss."

"I see that too now," he nods. "She's hungry, Sam," he says.

"Well, imagine us up a bottle," Sam insists.

"I'm not sure it works like that…" Jack says.

"If you think I'm going to try to breastfeed an invisible baby, you're crazy," Sam mutters.

"She will," Jack says, nodding towards the ground, "But she does want privacy."

They all step into the next room, and stand there awkwardly for a little bit.

"So, a daughter?" Dan'yel asks.

Jack glares at him.

"I think maybe we should get outta here before…" Jack doesn't finish his sentence with the "before" he's hoping doesn't happen, but the rest of them are pretty sure they know what the before refers to. Before he falls more in love with his tiny imaginary daughter. Before he says things to his second in command that can't be unsaid. Before it gets too hard to leave at all.

"Sir, I really think that these people could be powerful allies. At the very least, this would be a nice place to have refuges while we are looking to relocate. They would certainly be content here," Sam points out.

"So content that they would never leave, and they'd end up becoming pure energy, or whatever these people are," Jack grumbles.

"Jack, that may be true, but I don't really see the harm in that either. If that is the choice they make there are worse ways to live," Dan'yel points out.

"Doesn't it occur to anyone that the real world keeps existing even if you refuse to participate in it?" Jack grumbles.

Just then they hear a tiny baby scream. They rush into the room that used to contain Jack's hallucination of Sam and the baby. Daniel and Teal'c of course see nothing. Sam and Jack see the baby screaming on the floor.

"Did she drop her?" Sam asks, confused.

"She's just… gone," Jack says, stunned. He swoops in to pick up the baby. "Can we get a bottle in here or something? Yo, Echo!"

Echo appears, and hands the bottle to him. Jack drips some on his wrist, and then begins feeding the baby.

"Why did she disappear?" Jack asks in a clearly annoyed voice.

"You and Samantha wish to share a vision. You have already begun, since you both see Grace. Having other versions of each other would only add to the confusion."

"So you got rid of the extras," Sam says.

"Ya could have waited until she'd set the baby down!" Jack exclaims in anger.

"The infant suffered no harm," Echo says in a voice marked with confusion.

"Because she isn't real," Daniel points out.

"I know, but it just seems like you could treat even an imaginary person with a little bit of kindness and respect," Jack grumbles.

"Let me hold her," Sam says as Jack finishes the feeding.

"Alright, Carter, but you have to burp her. Hold her up to your shoulder like this, and tap on her back," Jack demonstrates before handing her over.

Sam does it all while bouncing a little. Jack smiles thinking how much she's a natural. Daniel tries really hard not to laugh at what looks like a mime show of infant care. Teal'c contemplates how this is exactly how it should be. One generation of warriors raising the next.

Then suddenly Daniel and Teal'c have nothing to laugh at or contemplate. They find themselves, each in their private vision.

Daniel is on Abydos. He'd forgotten that Sha're was dead. Forgotten that she'd ever been a Goa'uld. Forgotten everything, but the fact that he loved her more than life itself.

"My Dan'yel," she whispers, "The fire has gone cold."

"Mmmm," he muttered trying to pretend he is asleep.

"What a lazy husband I have!" she exclaims, slipping out from the covers to put another log in the fire. In the desert, the days are warm, but the nights are chilly. Chilly, not cold. So Sha're doesn't slip into her clothes before warming the fire.

She turns to see him staring at her. Enjoying all the things the cold does to her bare body.

She laughs, "You are not lazy husband, but you are incorrigible."

"And you love it," he whispers, drawing her back under the covers.

"I love you," she says.

Teal'c is on the planet of his birth. In the tent in which his mother raised him. It's not his tent anymore. He is a warrior now, brining honor to his mother's name by fighting battles.

"How did you know that he would come and try to murder me?" his mother asks.

"I only predicted his behavior based on past experiences," Teal'c says.

"If you hadn't been able to predict his behavior as accurately I would not be with us anymore," she says.

"I am glad was able to save you," Teal'c says seriously.

"And to free your people from millennium of slavery," Teal'c's father says as he enters the room, "You ought to be very proud of your father," he says, lifting Ray'ac up onto his shoulders.

Teal'c has a nagging feeling at the back of his mind. He is happy, but… he feels as if there is something he ought to remember. Something that needs to be done, or protected, or saved.

Sam and Jack find themselves waking to bird's chirping. The sound is soon interrupted by the cry of their daughter.

"I'll get her," Jack says, hopping out of bed.

He looks down, somewhat surprised that he only sleeps in his boxer shorts. He thinks he can remember… another time or place where he used to sleep in sweatpants and a t-shirt.**

She hears him talking to the baby in the room next door, and her heart is filled with love. He is such a good father. He doesn't think he's a good father… why was that?

After the baby is changed, and fed, and he brings her back to his wife.

"I think I had a strange dream last night," he says.

"Me too," she admits, squinting.

"I had a dream, that we had a son… and he died," he says in horror.

She moves closer to him, "It was just a dream. We have a beautiful daughter, and she's fine, and maybe someday we'll have a son."

"I know, it just felt so…" he says slowly.

"Real," she says, "But it wasn't."

He nods his head. "What was your dream?" he asks.

"I don't remember, but I do know that it wasn't as good as this. There was… I think I liked wormhole physics."

"Are you sure you aren't bored? After moving to Minnesota with your retired husband?"

"Of course not! Educating the next generation of physicists is exciting stuff, and with my husband and daughter life could never be boring."

Daniel runs his finger down the columns of hieroglyphics.

"What are you discovering, husband," Sha're asks him.

"It's about the meaning of life," he says.

"What does it say about it?" she asks with excitement.

He blinks at her.

"What is wrong husband?" she asks.

"It just doesn't seem right. No one ever… cares what I find out."

"Are you kidding? The whole village hangs on every word you publish."

"Publish?" he says slowly, "That's right… I do publish my work, don't I?"

"Master Teal'c," someone calls out in front of the tent. "We need you at the Council."

"I am a leader of my people?" he asks.

"Of course, Dad," Rya'c says, "You freed them, and now you lead them."

"I am a warrior, not a politician," Teal'c says slowly.

"You stopped being a warrior when there stopped being wars," his mother reminds him.

Grace clearly has perfect timing. She didn't cry until after Sam and Jack finished their shared shower.

"I'll get her," Jack offers, with a special smile still lingering on his face.

"No, my turn," Sam says, putting on his robe even though hers is sitting right beside it. As she goes in to hold her daughter, her heart is filled with such unbelievable love. "Gracie, what would Mommy do without you?" she whispers.

"You're not Sha're!" Daniel screams, pushing her away from him.

"What are you talking about? Of course I am!" she insists.

"No! Sha're is dead! She's been dead for a while, and before that she was… not herself! It's not fair for you to pretend to be her. It's just cruel. Who are you?"

"I'm Sha're," she insists.

"No…" he says with a sudden memory, "No, you're the person I wished Sha're was. Damn me for changing her. If I hadn't, I might have stayed here forever. But now that I know… I don't want to stay in a fantasy world. I can't… and I have to bring them out of here too."

In a flash, he finds himself on a desert planet. A desert planet which is not Abydos. There are ruins in the distance, and for once he feels no desire to examine them. He sees his four friends laying on the floor near where he woke up.

"Sam," he says, shaking her, "Sam?"

"Sam, the baby is crying," Jacks says, toweling off his graying hair as he enters the nursery.

Sam is rocking in a chair, sobbing, and Grace is in her crib.

Jack picks up his daughter, and rocks her tears away. Then he turns to his wife, "Sam, are you ok?"

"She's not real," Sam whispers.

"What are you talking about?" Jack says.

"Grace is fictional, Jack," she says, staring at him.

"Is this post-partum depression or something?" he asks.

She snorts, "It can't be that. I've never given birth. I've never been pregnant," she mutters.

"Honey, I was there," he says, kneeling down beside her.

"No, Jack, you think you were there. This is the dream, and the dreams are truth."

"What are you talking about?" he demands.

"The Stargate, Jack! We went through the Stargate, and we met Echo, and she made this vision for us. But it isn't real. We aren't married. We don't live in your cabin, and we don't have a baby together."

He stares at her in horror, "Jack, Daniel wants us to wake up. He… figured out it wasn't real. And then he came and told me. If he hadn't… we could have stayed here."

"We could have spent out lives playing ostrich and raising imaginary children. Great option, Sam, he's saving us," Jack mutters.

"And yet you haven't stopped bouncing Miss Grace," she points out.

He frowns and puts the baby down, "She's not real."

"No," Sam says, shaking her head, "She's not real."

"Sam!" Daniel shouts again.

"Stop shouting, Daniel!" Sam shouts.

"You're awake?" Daniel says, "We've got to get off this planet, and I can't carry you all off."

"You'd better start shaking Teal'c, because no one can carry him off this planet," Jack says.

"Jack? How did you wake up? No one was shaking you," Daniel asked.

"Sam passed on your message," he says, rubbing his face.

"So where you were, you were there together?" Daniel asks.

"Let's not talk about it," Jack says, standing up.

He offers Sam – no, Carter. He has to remember she's Carter. When they were in the other world she might have been Samantha O'Neill. But here she was not that. He offers her an arm to help her get up. She refuses to take it. "Let's go and get Teal'c."

"The free Jaffa nation!" his right-hand-man proclaims and a whole crowd shouts in joy. Chants in joy.

"Teal'c," a soft voice says. He sees O'Neill standing next to him. "Maybe someday, buddy."

They reintegrate on the other side of the event horizon. General Hammond looks at them. "You're back early, SG-1. What happened?"

"Not much," Jack says, glancing at his teammates and wondering if this lie will suffice.

"I'd go ahead and say nothing," Daniel says, adding in his head that that is technically true. After all General Hammond didn't ask what they thought. And everything that happened on the planet happened nowhere but in their thoughts.

***Yeah, I know that I've used this name before, several times in fact. But I have to call this one Grace for reasons which will later become clear.**

****This is what Jack is wearing when Loki abducts him in "Fragile Balance." This story, however, takes place before "Fragile Balance" so Sam would not necessarily know what Jack wore to bed. Nor would she necessarily care. It's her fantasy as well as his, and she could choose to imagine him any way her little heart desired.**


	3. Home

Sorry folks! I uploaded a chapter from another story. This is what should have been posted! That will teach me to name things similarly.

Daniel closes his locker and looks at Jack, "So I'm guessing this briefing is going to be very brief indeed?" he asks.

"I'd appreciate it, Daniel. You'd probably be saving Sam and I from some jail time," Jack mutters.

"We will not reveal what happened," Teal'c vows.

"I just feel like, they could be powerful allies. Maybe we could tell them what happened without giving any details," Daniel offers.

"They screwed with our minds, and they are going to screw with the minds of anyone who goes there. Telling them what's there is just a way to lose a whole bunch of good men," Jack mutters.

Daniel nods.

"We were lucky to get out," Teal'c says.

"Right, lucky," Jack mutters slamming his locker with more force than necessary. Teal'c and Daniel silently leave.

A few minutes later, Sam tentatively knocks on the door, "Sir?" she asks.

He hates that word. He used to love it. The way she could do so much with it. Make it sound supportive, or dismissive, or downright insubordinate. And sometimes, she made it sound sweeter even than 'I love you.'

"Sorry, Carter, this place is becoming the woman's locker room isn't it?" he asks.

"Maybe we should talk a bit before the briefing," she offers.

"Daniel, Teal'c, and I think we should keep it quiet, you?"

She nods.

He looks at her for a long time, "We've left a lot of things 'in the room' over the years Carter. Maybe it's time we start considering not locking things away."

"Seven billion," she mutters.

"What?" he asks.

"That's how many people we save each and every time we save earth. Seven billion people who have lives and jobs and families, and some of whom have to be happy and fulfilled."

"Maybe we could be added to the number that are happy and fulfilled," he asks.

"You times that by the number of inhabited planets. For when we save the whole galaxy," she mutters.

"Sam…" he says, reaching for her arm.

"I can't live with that guilt," she says, "And you have enough guilt. Sir, I know there are many times when millions of people would have died if either of us hadn't been there. I don't see much of a point in being together if the whole world is going to die. We're part of the world, Jack."

He looks at her, "When I think of Grace… sometimes I think I need more than seven billion reasons. I am a selfish man."

"You're not the only one, sir," she says.

"But we're leaving it in the room again," he says.

She nods.

"I'm starting to believe that 'someday' will never come," she confesses.

"I know," he mutters.

"And if it does come, it could be too late for us to have a Grace," she says.

"I know," he says.

"I feel like I'm not being fair to you," she adds.

"Carter, I could quit. You couldn't stop me. And if I didn't work here anymore we could have something. But I haven't quit. You're not the only one thinking about trillions of souls."

"So here we are," she says.

"Yeah," he mutters, standing up.

He's halfway to the door before he turns around, "Carter?"

She looks up at him, hoping she doesn't look like she plans on having a good cry as soon as he was out of ear shot. "Yes, sir?"

"Was the shower real?"

"I think so," she replies, somewhat uncertainly. She remembers it and so does he. But they both also remember Grace.

"You'd tell me if… I mean, if you found out there was really going to be a Grace or a… I don't know, a boy Grace."

"Of course, sir, but there isn't much chance."

"I didn't think so, and I suppose it wouldn't be a good thing," he says.

"No, sir, it wouldn't. But I… can't help but hope," she whispers.

They lock eyes for a long second before he walks out, and leaves it in the room.

"So nothing happened on that planet. It was a barren planet with no signs of life, and you returned early because of weather concerns?" General Hammond asks, summing up the briefing.

"Yes, sir," Sam says, fidgeting like she's in a documentary.

Daniel nods, not looking up from the blank piece of paper on the table before him.

Teal'c gives a nod of assent looking just a centimeter above the General's head.

Jack doesn't say anything, but adds a little bit to the doodle in the corner of his paper.

General Hammond isn't an idiot. He knows when he's been lied to. But he trusts them. He has too. You can't give people as much power and authority as he gives them without also trusting them. And after you save the earth you earn a little bit of trust.

"Ok, SG-1, you're on stand-down until your next mission."


	4. Disapointment

**A few weeks later:**

"Sam, come on, we're late for a mission!" Daniel says, coming into her lab with the rest of SG-1 behind him.

She turns to him with tears running down her face.

"Sam, what's wrong?" he asks, concerned.

"Nothing," she says.

"Carter, if there is something which interferes with this mission…" Jack begins.

"It's nothing, sir. It's stupid. I just… got my period," she explains.

"Ok, girly hormone tears, gross," Daniel says.

"I believe the female reproductive system is beautiful," Teal'c offers.

"Thanks," Sam says, grinning at him.

"Are you tearing up?" Daniel asks Jack in shock.

"Hormones are contagious," Jack mutters turning away.

Then Daniel gets what Teal'c got right away.

"Sorry," Daniel mutters. It doesn't make sense in the conversation, but it makes sense to everyone in the room.

"It's for the best," Sam says.

Daniel looks at Jack, who nods slowly.

"I could ask Hammond to postpone the mission," Daniel offers.

"We chose this," Jack says, squaring his shoulders.

"We choose this every day," Sam adds.

"You are courageous warriors," Teal'c offers.

"That… and idiots," Daniel adds.


	5. Grace

**Season 7: During and After the Episode "Grace"**

Sam opens her eyes in the infirmary.

"Hey," he says, smiling at her. He is always there for her. He is a safe bet. He is one of the few people she can trust with her life. And he's the only one she'd ever dare to trust with her heart.

"Jack," she says.

"Excuse me?" he asks.

She is startled out of the memory. Yes, what happened on the Odyssey was no more real as what happened with the Furlings. "Sorry, sir," she mutters.

"Yes, well, a massive concussion will tend to… disorient one," he tells her, trying to make it sound light, but he knows that something series is wrong here.

She isn't surprised when he shows up at her doorstep later that night. She just holds the door open for him.

"So… what happened on the Odyssey?" he asks.

"Nothing real," she admits.

He nods. He'd figured as much.

"I hallucinated lots of people… Daniel, Teal'c, my father, you, and… Grace."

He looks at her, startled at the last one. Neither of them had mentioned Grace in the two years since they had left the Furlings.

"She was maybe six. As soon as I saw her… I thought I knew who she was. She has your beautiful eyes, and this hair… like my mom's," Sam continues.

Jack just smiles at her. Somehow Sam wishes he would make some sort of comment or facial expression so she could know what he was thinking. She's not even really sure if she should go on or not. But she figures she doesn't really have a choice, so she continues.

"But I wasn't sure until I asked her name, and she told me 'Grace'. Then later on, I asked her who she was and she told me I knew. And I did, sir. She… played like you. I mean she… you know, made things into a joke when it got to stressful. And she sang a song that my mother used to sing to me. A song that I'd always decided I was going to sing to any children that I had. And she… she knew a lot about science for being a kid so young. She was ours, Jack."

He sits in silence for a little bit, "What did he say to you?" She looks up at him, startled. "He wasn't me, and I just want to know… did he say something I wouldn't?"Jack asks with a clearing of the throat.

Sam debates for a while. Should she tell him the truth? A lie? Refuse to say anything? "I don't think he wanted me to wait forever."

Jack stands and paces away from her. Then he turns to face her again, "He's right, of course. You could still have your Grace - with someone else."

"She wouldn't be Grace then, sir," she replies.

"Do you want me to retire?" he asks softly, slowly, hopefully.

She shakes her head.

"Then damn the universe for doing this to us again! We know what we're missing," he screams up at the roof of Sam's house, "Stop reminding us. Our only Goddamned hope is that we can forget," then he stomps out of the house.

Sam sits down on the floor, with her knees in front of her. And she started wondering. Was something better than nothing? Would some other child with some other man be better than nothing? Would there ever be another man who was better than nothing? She knew for certain there would never be a man who was better than him.

**If you like strict reality this is the end of the story. If you want reality with a touch of sugar carry on.**


	6. Threads

After "Threads"

Her father had told her she could still have everything she wanted. Her real father, not just some hallucination of him. But it didn't really matter.

The war was never going to be over.

She will never want to quit.

She will never want him to quit.

So she wants her job, and she wants Jack, and she wants Grace. How can she have everything she ever wanted? Especially since he's dating someone.

She was engaged. What right had she to think that he'd wait around forever?

She hears a knock on the door. "Come in," she says.

Jack walks in, "Are you ok?"

She nods.

"Sorry, about Jacob," he mutters.

"Yeah," she adds.

Jack perches on a stool and sits silently for a minute. "Jacob said something kinda weird to me right before he died," Jack confesses.

Sam's head jerks up toward his, "What?"

"He ah…well…he wanted me to make sure that you ah…He asked me to take care of you."

Sam smiles.

"But the way he said it…" Jack tries to clarify.

"I know the way he said it, Sir," Sam says, "Probably something like the way he said I could have everything I want. But you'd better go see Kerry," she whispers.

"Ah…Kerry and I are over," he says.

She looks into his eyes for a while. Is it really possible for her to have the job that she wants and the family that she wants? Well, maybe not the exact job that she wants, but maybe she could settle for second best. "Sir, I've been contemplating transfer to Area 51."

He smiles, "That's ah…out of the SGC's chain of command. But, it's also a long way away."

"Sir, did you read the report about the device SG-5 brought back a few months ago?" she asks with a smile.

"The teleportation thing-a-ma-bob?" he asks.

She nods.

"Yeah, I read all about it including the part where they couldn't get it to work," he says.

"Well they didn't exactly know how to charge it," she says.

"Didn't it come with a wall adaptor?" he asks in mock shock.

"Anyway I got them to work. You simply touch one on one side, and you come out on the other side."

"Kind of like the Stargate?" he asks.

"Ah…the results are sort of the same, but no, Sir, nothing like the Stargate."

She presses one of the devices into his hand, and he slips it into his pocket. "Carter? I'm really sorry about your Dad," he says holding out his arms in an offer of a hug. She takes him up on the offer falling into his arms, and crying for a few minutes.

"I'll get you those transfer papers, Sir," she says.

He looks at her, "You sure, you're going to be ok with this?"

"Yes, I'm beyond sure," she tells him. Inside of her head she wonders if she can really have everything she's ever wanted. Maybe even Grace, or to be more realistic a real child which was not a figment of her own or Jack's imagination.

Sam has been transferred to Area 51 for almost a week now. There are a lot of things she misses. Her friends, her old house (which it took years to get arranged just the way that she liked it), the fact that everyone viewed her as a leader in a field (whether that field was military or scientific) and perhaps most of all she misses him. But she will get to see at least that one thing that she misses tonight.

Her phone rings. She knows that it's going to be him even before she looks at his name on the color ID.

"Ah…Sam, about tonight…" he stammers. Shoot. No doubt another emergency has come up. He's canceling a date on her again. It's been one of them canceling every single date they've made since she was transferred here. Maybe…they really went meant to be, and she was just making herself into a total fool trying to force something that was never going to happen.

"Your place or mine?" he asks. There is a pause as she tries to hold in her laughter. "That didn't come out right," her obviously flustered former commander mumbles.

"I think you meant something more like, 'your state or mine,'" she says deciding to spare him.

"Right," he says.

"I am a little homesick for Colorado, sick of the heat," she says, "but I think it might cause a few rumors to come up if I actually showed up there, and we out."

"It could cause just as many rumors there, it's not like the egg heads on that base have never heard of SG-1. Most of the really interesting stuff they have to study came from our exploits," Jack mutters.

"So I guess we either have to be comfortable with everyone knowing, or…"

"It really is your place or mine. Without all the innuendo of course," he adds.

"Pizza and a movie at your place at seven?" she asks.

"Sure, but what kind of movie. If we go with science fiction you're going to talk through the whole thing telling me what's wrong with it. If we go with action we end up with the same problem. If we go with comedy you'll spend the whole time groaning at their jokes."

"So what about romantic comedy?" she suggests.

"Are you kidding? You actually like chick flicks?" he asks in shock.

"Sometimes, I also like science fiction, and action, but you are right, I would talk through the whole thing."

"I thought by dating you I wouldn't have to do all the girly boyfriend things like watching chick flicks or holding your purse while you shop."

"Oh, you'll still have to do some of those girly boyfriend things. But I promise not to make you hold my purse. If you watch a chick flick with me, I'll watch an episode of the Simpsons, and see if I can see the whole Goa'uld metaphor in there this time."

"Sweet!" he says.

Usually, Sam is late for dates. Sometimes it's just the typical womanly date waiting in the foyer for a few minutes kind of thing. Sometimes she forgets all about the date and works all night not even noticing she missed something. Assuming the guy doesn't dare call her at work.

Pete used to call her at work, and usually she'd apologize, talk for a few minutes, and get back to work.

But she transports into Jack's house she is two minutes early. The couch is tipped upside down, and he's crawling around behind it.

"How on earth did that get here?" he mutters in disgust.

"Sir?" she says quietly.

He jumps, and turns to look at her with a rather sheepish look on his face.

"So the transporter is pretty quiet then?" he asks.

"Apparently, doing some cleaning?" she retorts.

He shrugs, "You wouldn't like it if I hadn't cleaned the place up a bit." He flips the couch down, "Just let me throw this handful of crap," he indicates the garbage he fished out from under the couch, "and then the date can begin."

He comes back in from the kitchen a minute later. "You know you called me Sir," he reminds her.

"I'm sorry, old habits," she mutters.

"Well, you're going to have to stop that, or this is going to just seem wrong," he says moving forward and giving her a kiss. His lips just barely brushed hers. If it was on a cheek or a forehead or a nose it could even be a kiss of friendship. Something she wouldn't be surprised to receive from Daniel or Teal'c if one of them was injured. But this wasn't from Daniel or Teal'c and it was on her lips, and it was the beginning of something.

He pulls away checking to see if she was ok with it. She smiles at him.

"How was the trip?" he asks her.

She smiles, "A lot easier to take than a trip through the stargate."

"I don't know, after you put the inertial dampeners in trips on the stargate became down right easy. Too easy."

"Too easy?" she says with a raised brow.

"You know, you have to make it kind of hard or else you can't keep out the rift raft," he explains.

"Considering the Goa'uld use them on a regular basis, I don't think you have much of an argument."

"But rift raft of course, Carter," he catches himself, "Samantha, I mean the Marines."

She laughs at him. No giggles at him. Differently than she did all those years that she was under his command. Sure she laughed at him then too, but it was a reserved sort of silent laughter.

If she was still under his command he'd say, "No giggling Colonel." But she isn't under his command anymore. So all those no giggling Captains, and Majors, and Colonels are gone. Now they are just Sam and Jack, and he is not going to give her any commands.

"So pizza?" he says holding out a hand toward the living room.

From team nights Sam had determined that Jack's table was more of a convenient place to store trash in that inconvenient time between when the trash got full and when it was trash day. But today the table seemed to be pretty functional. The pizza was laid out on it, and there were plates on the table.

"I thought you were anti-plate?" Sam asks.

"Ah….that's what they make dish washes for," he grumbles.

There are candles on the table too, and as he moves to light then she feels unbelievably touched. Jack never struck her as a romantic man. Jack had never been a romantic man in the few relationships she'd seen him in be in in the eight year's she'd known him. But there was that other Jack, from the other reality. The one that light candles for some other Samantha's anniversary. And in some ways it wasn't another Jack at all. It was her Jack. The one she could have, should have had years ago.

Already he was 'her' Jack.

He smiles at her, "You're thinking loudly, Samantha."

"I was just thinking about how we should have done this years ago," she says.

He smiles at her, "Well, let's not dwell."

They sit down, and the conversation flows easily, like it has for eight years. But Jack finds himself a bit disappointed that the conversation really is the same kind of conversation they have been having for the last eight years.

"Sam," he says suddenly, "we never talked about how we're going to do this. Are we taking things fast or slow?"

"I hope we don't take it too slow. We've been waiting a long time, and we're…we're not young Jack."

"Well, I'm not young anyway," he says.

He looks up, and can see Sam looking incredibly sad, "What's wrong?" She doesn't answer, but he get it. Like lightning through his skull. "This is about Grace isn't it?"

"No….not really. I mean I know that grace is just a shared hallucination. That…if we did have a baby together it wouldn't be Grace."

"Sam, first of all I need you to understand you are not old. You are beautiful beyond all measure. Second of all, if we have a baby, wonderful, I'm going to be so happy. If it doesn't happen. Well, then I gave up on having a baby eighteen years ago after Sara and I had been trying for three years, so…" he doesn't finish his sentence.

She grabs his hand to try to comfort him.

"If we don't have a kid, you might not be the reason," he tells her.

"I'm sorry, Jack," she says.

"But we don't know what could happen," he reminds her, "I've seen the inside of a sarcophagus, and you're still young."

She nods her head.

"So we're talking about kids on a first date, this is the opposite of slow," he says causing her to laugh a little.

"I suppose it is," she admits. "There is one other thing that I wanted to talk to you about. I know that we are keeping this thing pretty quiet. I mean, what we're doing isn't against the regs anymore, but we just wanted to avoid the rumors. But I was wondering…there are a couple of people I think we should tell."

"Daniel and Teal'c, I know, I've been thinking about that too," Jack says.

"We know they can keep a secret," Sam points out, "Even under torture."

He flinches a little bit, because he knows, better than her, just how true that statement is. Sam doesn't know about the car batteries in Honduras. Daniel wanted to keep that a secret from everyone but the doctors and the General, and Jack had honored his request.

"I think we should tell them," he nods.

"How about our unofficial use of alien technology?" Sam asks nervously.

"Come on, you've seen their apartments right? I don't think they'd want to risk a search of SGC personal's homes. It would not end well for them, Daniel in particular."

"Right," she says with a laugh.

"Besides, they miss you. I would like to have some team days, maybe. Not that I don't like this," he says waving between them.

"I miss them too, and I wouldn't mind some team nights, as long as we still get date nights," she says with a smile.

"Yeah," he says taking her hand again. He begins to rub his thumb on the web between her fingers. Her stomach is doing little flips. She looks up into his eyes, and sees that he knows what he is doing to her.

Two can play at that game. She moves her foot over to his under the table. His thumb stalls on her hand for a second, then it resumes its motion, and her foot begins hers.

It's a long time before he gets up to put the pizza leftovers in the fridge, and they move to the living room.

He turns on a movie. The girlest in the movie rental place. He sits down on the couch, and she curls up into his side, with her feet beside her. He puts an arm around her, and places a kiss on her forehead. She turns her head up toward him, and kisses him on her lips. He pulls her closer, and deepens the kiss.

They keep it light, but the kiss lasts a long time. When they finally readjust their bodies, and get back to the movie they are rather lost at what's happening.

"We should restart it," Sam advices.

"I don't know, more fun this way. It's a puzzle," he says intertwining his fingers with hers.

Soon they discover that Jack treats romances about the same as Sam treats science fiction-there are a lot of comments.

When the movie finishes Jack turns the Simpson on, and Jack explains the analogy. As the night gets later the conversation legs. Sam falls asleep resting on Jack's chest. Jack runs his hand through her hair, slowly, and soon he finds himself falling asleep as well.

There is a banging on the door the next morning. "Jack! Hey Jack!" Daniel's voice. Jack tries to stand up, trying to figure out why he has a crick in his back.

He hears a plaintive whimper and Sam grab onto him.

Right Sam. He just spent the night with Sam. By accidently, and quite innocently, but still.

He slips out of Sam's grip gently, and heads to open the door.

"What's wrong, Daniel?" he asks.

"Nothing is wrong, but I found an interesting text that might lead us to find some real live Ancients.

"Great, just give me a little bit, and I'll come in a talk about it."

"No, it's your day off, I'll just give you a quick briefing…." Daniel starts walking toward the living room.

"Hey, Daniel why don't we go have this talk on the porch?" Jack says trying to distract him.

Daniel turns to give him a strange look.

"Jack?" Sam's tired voice says.

Daniel's eyes get huge, but he doesn't move.

Jack walks into the living room, "'Morning," he tells her with a smile. "Daniel made a surprise visit." Her eyes get huge. "Tried to stall, then you called to me…" Jack continues.

"We fell asleep? I spent the night here?" she asks confused.

He nods his head.

"I figured since the cat is out of the bag we might as well invite Teal'c to join us. You've got weekends off right? I mean you don't have to rush back do you?" he asks.

"I'm good. Just give me a little time to clean up," she says heading toward the bathroom.

He goes back to the kitchen. "Daniel, I'm going to give Teal'c a call. If you want to go sit in the living room, Sam and I will join you in a bit. I mean…you don't need to get back do you?"

"No, I'm definitely here for the duration," he says still looking quite shocked.

Jack re-enters the living room a few minutes later.

"Teal'c's on his way," he offers.

Daniel smiles at him, "Sam's in town?"

"Yeah," Jack says.

"How long is she staying for?" Daniel asks.

"Well, if we hadn't fell asleep watching the Simpsons she would have left last night," he says.

Daniel raises an eyebrow, "When did she get here?"

"Last night," Jack says.

"Short trip."

"Yep," he says.

"I'm assuming we're waiting for Teal'c before you tell me what the hell his is about."

Jack nods.

"Just tell me…are you the reason Sam switched jobs?" Jack doesn't say anything, because he hopes he isn't the only reason, "Because…I hope," Daniel says, "I hope that she's going to be happy with this choice. I mean…not that you're not awesome, but…are you enough?"

Jack doesn't have an answer. But just then Sam comes out of the bathroom.

"Hey, nice to see you again," Daniel says standing up to meet her, and giving her a big hug. "How are things," he says clearly fishing.

"Let's wait for Teal'c before I go into that too much," she says.

"Ok, how is Nevada? Assuming you actually went to Nevada?" Daniel asks.

"Ah…yeah, I do live in Nevada now," Sam says.

"K," Daniel says. "Did you find a place to live? Do you need a place to live?"

"I have my own house. I slept here last night, completely by accident."

"Ok, so how do you like Area 51? Are the scientists there pretty easy to work with?" Daniel presses.

"Scientists are never easy to work with," Jack argues causing both of them to glare at him.

Not long after Teal'c arrives. Seeing Sam there almost makes a surprised look cross his face, but Jaffa have no emotions. "It is a pleasure to see you again Colonel Carter," he says.

"Apparently she woke up here," Daniel says looking at his friends.

"Ok, first of all I only woke up here, because the Simpson's are so boring," Sam protests.

"Hey now!" Jack exclaims.

"But I came here last night, for…a date," she says.

Jack smiles at her.

"Ok, so you're dating," Daniel repeats, "for how long?"

"This was our first date," Jack offers, "We couldn't have dated until Sam went to Area 51."

"So let me get this straight, you worked together for eight years, side by side, but you don't get together until you are half a country apart? That sucks!" Daniel exclaims.

"Well, we might have," Jack clears his throat, "borrowed, a little piece of alien technology to make the transit speed up."

Daniel smiles, "Ah…so Sam, can I see your new house?"

"Sure, why don't I give you all a tour," she offers.

"So we're done talking about the fact that Sam and I are dating?" Jack says somewhat shocked.

"Did you expect your teammates to be shocked at this development?" Teal'c asks.

"I thought you'd guys want to talk about it a little bit," Jack says pouting.

"I assume you want to keep this quiet, right?" Daniel asks.

They both nod.

"And this is your first date right? So I assume you'll update us as things go on…like invite us to the wedding etc."

"First date, Daniel," Jack reminds him.

"Right, but you're Sam and Jack," Daniel says.

"I am glad that you have found modes for expressing your affection," Teal'c offers.

"Thanks, T," Jack says.

Sam shows her house to her friends. They even help her unpack for a little while. Then Daniel and Teal'c head back.

Jack stayed back for a minute.

"So, the cat is out of the bag," he says.

She nods her head. "Good date," she says leaning forward for a kiss. Jack holds her face with both of his hands, for a single second. Then he wraps both his arms around her pulling her tight to him. Then he swings her around, and gives her a deep dip. At first she is surprised, but she reaches up an arm to massage his shoulder before wrapping it around him as well.

He pulls her back up, "Wow," she whispers.

"We did that once in the time loop," Jack says.

"You are braver than me," she says, "I never made the move in any alternate reality.

"No, you are the braver one," he says, "You made the move in real life.'

She looks at him, narrowing her eyes, "What's wrong?" she says massaging his shoulder some more.

"Just something Daniel said," Jack mutters, "I should retire."

"Daniel said you should retire?" Sam says sounding confused.

"No, not exactly, he just said. Sam, you're going to resent me. You're going to hate me, because you're not doing what you love anymore. I can't…I won't let you start hating me," he says.

"Jack, I will never hate you. I choose to switch jobs, and it was not only about you. Did it ever occur to you that I'm tired? I have been at war most of my adult life. Most of my life if you consider sending my dad off to war, which is a sacrifice in itself. I am done! I've been waiting for the war Goa'uld to be gone for a long time. Now it is! I'm done fighting Jack! If they really need me I'll be back. Until then, I'm going to rest! I'm going to be a person for a while, Jack! Not a soldier or a scientist or this Superhero! I just want to be Sam!"

He pulls Sam close to him, "Hey, you are Sam. Just be Sam."

"Aren't you tired?" she asks.

He pulls away, nodding, and looks at her, "I got a job offer. They want to give me my second star, and relocate to Washington, D.C."

"Congratulations," she says.

"I wouldn't accept until I knew. I mean….if you told me to retire I would. Otherwise, we're still not in the same chain-of-command, and it would be just as easy to commute from Washington to Nevada as it was from Colorado."

"Take the job," she says with a grin, "and I'll be dating a two star General."

"So I'll see you soon?" he asks touching her face.

"Very soon," she says kissing him one last time.


	7. Yes?

Sam and Jack continued to date each other a few times a week as Jack made the move to D.C. There were no more overnight visits, accidental or otherwise, after the first date.

Jack invited Sam over for when he'd moved it.

"Sorry that it's mostly boxes," Jack mutters.

"It's ok, I can help you unpack if you want," she offers.

"You can come back tomorrow, if you want," he says, fidgeting with things.

"Are you nervous about something?" she asks, stopping him.

"Just come," he says taking her into the kitchen.

This room, at least, is finished. The table has a fancy tablecloth, and it is set with a clearly catered meal.

"Jack, you're going to have to stop spoiling me. You know I'd be fine with pizza on a paper plate," she whispers.

"You deserve fancy sometimes," he says, giving her a quick kiss, "Besides, now that I live a bit further from the gossips, we can actually go out for dates."

"You think D.C. is away from the gossips?" she teases.

"Well, it's away from the gossips that I know anyway," he says with a smile.

"But going out sounds fun," she says with a smile.

He lights the candles, and she sits down.

Each plate has a cover over it like it's from room service. Sam lifts the plate nearest her, and finds only a ring in it. She stares at it, and then back at Jack.

"I know; crazy, right? It's too soon, forget I mentioned it," he mutters.

"You didn't even wait for my answer," she stammers, "Yes!"

"Yes?" he asks.

"Unless you weren't serious?" she says.

"No, I was serious, I just didn't think you'd actually consider it," he says.

"Yes," she repeats.

His face breaks into a huge grin.

"Tell me about this ring," she asks, slipping on the ring and coming over to sit on his lap.

He puts his arms around her, "The metal is naquadah," he tells her.

"I felt that!" she exclaims.

"Yeah, me too after Cain," he offers, "It doesn't bother you, does it?"

She shakes her head, "It reminds me of the feeling I get when I'm close to you. I mean post-Cain, of course," she says, "And the rock?"

"It's from Dakara. We don't have a rock like it on Earth. Teal'c called it carmot," Jack explains.

"You're giving me a mythical rock?" she asks.

"Mythical on Earth," he clarifies. He clears his throat, "With the ring I intended… ah… to tell you…" he begins.

She turns her head toward him.

Jack puts a hand one on each side of his face, and turns her away from him, "I love you," he whispers near her ear.

She turns sideways on her lap so she can see him, "I love you too," she says, "I have for years," she begins to kiss him.

"We're getting married," she says grinning at him.

"Right, uh… when were ya thinking?" he asks bashfully.

"Soon?" she asks.

His grin grows.

"I was thinking a small wedding, our friends, and my brother and his family, and… do you have family?"

"Ah… not close family. I'm an only child, and my parents are both gone, but I have some cousins and whatnot."

"Are you close to any of them?"

"Not really, no."

"Did you want a long engagement?" she asks, "I don't want you to feel like I'm going too fast."

"No, I like this short engagement, as long as it is what you really want to do. I hope it isn't just because you don't want people to know about us."

"They are going to know about us now, now that we're getting married," she points out.

"Good point, so you want the big wedding?"

She shakes her head, "But I do want to wear my mom's dress, and I want you in your dress blues."

"Done," he says, "You're easy to make deals with."

"After we get married?" she pauses for a long period of time, and then asks nervously, "Are we going to start trying for a baby?"

He nods, taking her hand. "Even if we don't have a baby you know I am going to love you just as much right?"

She nods her head, "But I really do want to have a baby."

He runs his hand over hers, gently, "I know exactly how you feel. Now, let's eat, because after dinner I have to make some calls. Daniel and Teal'c are wondering what your answer would be."

"You can't leave them in agony," she says, pulling out her phone to call her friends.

Jack finds himself wishing that he hadn't been too nervous to eat lunch.

Even though Sam went home that night, she couldn't resist dropping in for breakfast the next morning. So Jack wakes up to the smell of frying eggs and bacon.

"You'd better be careful," he warns her, "A man could get used to this."

"You'd better be careful, because a girl could get used to the dinners you've been giving me."

"So you want to go out today? Go on some kind of a date that is actually outside of one of our houses?"

She grins, "I have a great idea of where I want to go, but you're not going to like it."

"Where?" he asks with a sigh.

"I want to go to the Smithsonian. They have a lot of new exhibits since I was here."

"Scientists," he says with a sigh.

"You've got to love us!" she says with a grin.

"I suppose I do," he says, kissing her.

Just then her phone rings, "Mark! No, I'm glad you called. Yeah, I do have big news. I'm engaged… no, Pete and I are definitely over. Jack O'Neill. Yeah, he used to be. No… I told you I have a new job. No, not just for him. Because I love him," she pulls the phone away from her face, and stares at the phone.

Jack wraps an arm around the back of her, "You ok?"

"He said he's not coming."

"I'm sorry," Jack says.

"It's ok," she says with a sigh leaning against him for support.

He rubs his arm up and down comfort. "Do you still want to go out?"

"More so now," she confides.


	8. Wedding

**I promise the Furlings will show up again. Just be patient.**

Sam fidgets in the bride's room.

"Are you ok?" Cassie asks.

"Yeah," Sam says, "I know I shouldn't complain, I just wish I had SOME family here."

"What am I, chopped liver?" Cassie asks.

Sam smiles pulling her close, "No, I'm so glad YOU'RE here. You and Daniel and Teal'c. You're the family I have now. I'm lucky to have you. But you're off at college, and Teal'c is starting to spend most of his time a Dakaara, and Daniel is going to be leaving for Atlantis before long."

"And you're working at AREA 51, and Jack is working in D.C. we've ALL gone our separate ways. Families do that, but they are still family," Cassie reminds her.

"I know, and I'm so lucky to have you," Sam says.

Sam still looks sad. "Should I beat up Mark for you?" Cassie offers.

"No thanks," Sam says with a laugh.

Just then Sam hears her brother's voice at the door, "are you decent?" he asks.

"Mark?" she says excitedly flinging the door open.

"Wow, way more than decent, you look amazing in Mom's dress," he says.

"You came," she says in shock.

"Well, what can you do? My baby sister is getting married. You are getting married right? Third time is the charm?"

She punches him lightly, and then pulls him into a hug. "I thought you weren't coming," she chokes out.

"I'm sorry I was an ass, but I wouldn't really miss my sister's wedding. The kids and Jannie made it too," he says.

"Thank you, Mark," she whispers continuing to hug. Then she pulls away, "You remember Cassie, right?"

"Sure, how could I forget my almost niece?" he asks. Mark doesn't miss the joy that comes over the young woman's face as he says that, or the flicker of sorrow that crosses his sister's. But he isn't quite sure what the second one means.

"So help me Mark, if you are delaying the bride," Jannie says bursting into the room and earning more hugs from those that are around her.

"You'll do absolutely nothing about it," Mark finishes with flourish.

Cassie told Jack that the delay was caused by Sam's family's arrival, but it still made him nervous. His mind started going through all the reasons that Sam wouldn't be showing up today. At first they started off with pretty practical reasons, like maybe she had realized he wasn't good enough for her and run away, or maybe she was just touching up her hair. Then the reasons got more bizarre. Perhaps, Thor had beamed her up to prevent her from making a horrible mistake, or maybe she'd touched some parallel universe mirror up in the bride room and was currently fighting replicators or some other particularly nasty enemy.

The she walks into the room, and he smiles at her, and he knows he has nothing to worry about. That she is never going to run away, that no matter how long she spends fixing up her hair he's going to be waiting for her when she's done, that even if the wholeuniverse, including the Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet told her not to do it, she would marry him anyway, that no matter what came up at work she would come home to him as long as she drew breathe.

May that be a long time.

It comes time for them to say their handwritten vows, and Sam goes first. "This was a long time in coming," this earns a laugh, particularly form the small SGC contingent, "but it was worth the wait. Jack, you are worth the wait. And all the 'Sir's' and 'Colonel's' I called you over the year's is just going to make all the things I call you now all the sweeter-like snookum's." That is a joke that earns a laugh only from her husband-to-be, "but as excited as I am to call you 'Jack', I am going to be so much more excited to call you 'husband'. I am so thrilled that after all of our waiting we will not have to wait another day.

For eight years I have served next to you, and discovered what an honorable soldier, leader, man you are. Now, for the rest of our lives we are going to be doing a different kind of serving beside one another, and I hope I will get to discover all new aspects of your personality."

Jack pauses for a second after her speech, taking her hands in his. "Well, I sure as hell can't follow that up, so let's go have cake!"

Some of the guests, the ones who knew Jack well, but not Sam well stood up to obey. Sam gives him a glare, and he makes a motion for the standing guests to sit back down. "I'm just kidding, sit, sit. Don't worry, this isn't the first time that cake's gotten me into trouble," he mutters. Sam is the only one who laughs at this, because the few other's that actually know the story fond it in poor taste for his wedding speech.

"Samantha, I told you before that you are one of this nation's national treasures. What I didn't tell you is that you are the worlds' treasure, the galaxy's treasure, the whole universe's treasure. You do things no one else can do, while doing algebra in your head and eating jello. You're so far beyond amazing. And when I look at you, and think about how you are this amazing gift to the planet, I can't believe you would spend one second with me. And here you are promising that you are going to spend your whole life with me. I don't know who gave you the selective brain damage that lead to that decision, but I want to thank him or her, every day for the rest of our lives together."

Sam starts crying, Jack pulls her close. "Tears? Why are there tears?" which causes her to laugh again.

Sam had told Cam that if the world really needed her she would be there, and she'd meant it. It was just that she was hoping that this time, after everything she had done for the world, the world wasn't really going to need her.

Leave it to Daniel to discover a whole new race of aliens even more evil than the last. Who have just as great control over their subjects. Leave it to Daniel to force her to move back to the Springs, and go back to activity duty.

"Why are you so blue about this?" Jack asks as the two of them are eating dinner at Sam's house.

Sam doesn't answer, she's just shrugs.

"It is because you're going back for another war?" he asks.

"Area 51 is safer," she says.

"Sam, you don't have to come back, just because they asked you. If you don't want to be on a frontline team you don't have to be," he says confused as to why….after all this time she's worried about her safety.

"Safer for a baby…" she butters.

His eyes bulge in excitement.

"No," she stammers sorry to have got his hopes up, "It's just that for the first time in my life I'm actually TRYING to have a baby. And I could be pregnant right now and not know it, and I just…liked being at Area 51."

"You could stay there," he remind her.

"I know," she says with a sigh, "but the universe is in danger, and I'm probably not pregnant, and…"

"It's your choice," he reminds her.

"Thanks, I'll let you know what I decide," she mutters.


	9. Hope Lost

**After "Line in the Sand"**

Lam hadn't given him many medical details. He'd been told that Sam was stable. That she'd had multiple surgeries, and that she'd lost a lot of blood. She'd been shot by and Ori staff weapon, and he didn't even know where she'd been shot.

At least the people at the SGC had the grace not to ask how exactly he'd arrived fifteen minutes after being called. The commute to the SGC from Sam's house was considerably shorter than D.C.

Sam was curled up in a ball facing away from him.

"Samantha," he says softly.

She doesn't turn to answer him.

"What happened?" he asks.

"I thought I was going to die," she tells him.

His stomach sink, and slips into the tiny spot between her and the wall that she's facing. "Where were you hurt?" he presses.

She just starts to cry.

"Are you ok, now?" he asks in concern.

She shakes her head no.

"What's wrong?" He asks, "Do you need surgery, physical therapy, a Goa'uld hand device? I could probably try it. I mean, I've never used it before, but I do have the necessary protein marker."

She grabs his arm, "Most of me is fine," she tells him.

He sits down on the bed, "What part of you isn't fine?" he asks.

She touches the lower left abdomen through the blanket. "It was an Ori staff blast, it went right through me. Mitchell applied pressure, otherwise the bleeding alone would have killed me. It nicked the colon, and there was some leakage, which is what most of the surgery was for."

"What else was the surgery for?" he asks scraping hair away from her face. He can feel the worst is yet to come.

"Jack," she whispers, "I can't have a baby," she whispers.

He looks away taking a deep slow breath, "We always knew there was a possibility that we couldn't…" he beginning.

"I know," she sobs, "but now we know. It's all gone," she sobs, "I'm never going to have children."

"It's ok," he assures her.

"Jack, I had a hysterectomy," she sobs.

"It's ok," he assures her.

"We can't have babies!" she shouts at him.

"I realize that Samantha! What the hell do you want me to do about it!" he shouts back.

She smiles faintly, "I wanted you to be angry, or sad, or something."

"I'm disappointed," he whispers, "I think all this time….I sort of believed we were going to get Grace. Even though it didn't make sense."

"I know," she says, "I talked this big tough game about how I was fine with whatever happened. But the truth is…I was so sure we were going to have a baby. Even after two years of no success, I just knew we were going to have a baby. I probably would have gone on hoping ridiculously long, and now there is just…no hope."

"I am glad you're alive," he says.

She nods her head. She knows she ought to be grateful. Surviving ten years or narrow escapes, ten years of almost-deaths. That really should be enough. But it isn't. She wants more. She wants that "everything you've wanted" her father promised her.

"I am really glad you're alive. I may have wanted a bigger family, Sam. Really wanted it. But I can't live without any family at all. You're my family, Sam, and I need you."

She cries for a little bit, before he lets her go. "I need to go call D.C., and tell them I'm staying here for a while."

"You could go back if it's important, I don't mind," she says.

"I think my wife almost dying is a good enough reason to take a short vacation," he tells her.

A few minutes after Jack leaves Mitchell comes in with the offer of macaroons.


	10. Gift Given Undeserved

**While Sam was in command of the "George Hammond"**

"Just a minute!" Jack calls as the doorbell rings.

It's clear, as he answers the door, that he was expecting take-out delivery, and not his wife. He's wearing baggy stained sweatpants, a hockey shirt, and the black stocking cap he wore once when he kissed her in the time loop. He only wears that when he is really missing his wife. Which happens quite frequently, now that she commands a space craft.

"Now, are these leaves really as surprising as they seem, or do you have them planned months in advance, and refuse to tell me?" he asks.

"She's real!" Sam explains.

"Yes, people normally are," he says, pulling her into the house and kissing her. He's used to having two conversations at once. When you haven't seen your spouse for a couple of months, it tends to happen. You are both getting the other one caught up on every different lives, and you don't have time to slow down and respond to each other's speech.

"Grace," Sam explains, after coming out of the passionate kiss.

"How long are you home for?" Jack asks at the same time.

"Didn't you hear me? Grace is real!" Sam repeats.

"Grace, as in our imaginary daughter?" he says.

"Right, but she's real," Sam says.

"Did you have a head injury? Did Dr. Lam clear you?" he asks, looking around at her head.

"No head injury this time, and it wasn't just me that saw her. Everyone on that ship saw her! Lam is doing a DNA test on her right now, but I know what it is going to be."

"Sam honey, maybe you did find someone that looks remarkably like what you saw… are we talking about the baby on that planet or the one you saw later aboard the Odyssey?"

"The one I saw on the Odyssey. The one who was six or seven years old," Sam explains.

"Right, well just because she looks like that doesn't mean that she really is. It doesn't mean she's our daughter. Besides, where is this girl from, does she have any parents?"

"That's the thing," Sam says, handing him a picture which Jack examines with some intensity, "She doesn't. The ship stalled. For no reason. The engineers were puzzled. But we happened to be right by this planet. So a few members of the crew used the rings to get down, and see if we could find a power source."

"Hold it, can you actually jump a spaceship? How big are those cables?" Jack interrupts.

She glares at her husband without answering him, "And I get down there, and Echo is there. She's talking to be about meaning of the word grace. How it's this gift given underserved. But how our Grace was different. How we deserved her, because we'd given up everything to save the world. How it was only just. And then… Grace was just standing by Echo. The crew, they saw Grace, but they didn't see Echo. As soon as Grace saw me she looked up at me, and says, 'Mommy'."

"How?" he asks.

"Exactly what I said!" Sam says with exasperation, "I asked her that, and she wouldn't answer me."

"Is she… solid?"

"Yes, she's… a normal six-year old, sir, except for the fact that she doesn't have any memories."

"No, memories, at all?"

"Well, she does recognize some things. For instance, she called me Mommy, and she knows what things are - like she knows vocabulary, and she described our house. But she doesn't have any memories, no stories of things that have happened to her. It's like Echo just blinked her into existence."

He moves closer to his wife, rubbing his hands on his shoulders, "Just because she isn't genetically ours doesn't mean we can't raise her," he tells her.

"I know, but she is ours, Jack; our genetic child. I know it. Jack, I shared a room with her on the last three days back. I… made her bubbles to play with. That wasn't hard, because we had soap and water, and on the Prometheus… she liked bubbles. I couldn't find her much else to play with on the ship. But she doesn't necessarily like toys, she really likes to play with things that are not really toys. Like… she loves boxes, Jack. And she just takes things off the desk, and builds things with it."

He smiles, "Yeah, kids are like that. You buy them an expensive toy, and they play with the box."

"I didn't tell her she could stay with us. She asked a few times, but I just wouldn't say yes or no," Sam says nervously.

"We're going to take Grace home," he says, as if it were obvious. "Can I go and meet her?" he asks, sounding timid.

Sam smiles, "She would love that. When I left, she asked, 'Are you bringing Daddy to meet me'?"

He smiles, and leans forward and kiss her forehead, "Let's go get our baby girl."

"Jack, you can go meet her. I have to pick up some things," Sam says.

"You just told me that you've had her for several days with nothing, and she's been fine," Jack reminds her.

"How are we going to get her home without a car seat? And she's been wearing the same outfit for four days, Jack! At night she's just worn one of my shirts, but… four days! And I just… I want her to have a stuffed animal."

He smiles at her, "Ok. You'll meet us there with the car seat?"

She smiles and nods, "I'm not getting a bed today. She's shared a bed with me since I got her. I know we can't do that forever, but…"

"A few more nights aren't going to hurt her. This is going to be one very spoiled little girl, Samantha."

"That she is," she agrees, and then offers, "Daniel is with her in his lab."

"We have a daughter," he whispers as he pulls her toward him with a kiss.

"Daddy!" a little girl says, launching herself at him. "I was worried that you didn't want me."

"Hey, Gracie, why would you think that?" he asks, grabbing her around the back, and running a hand through her curly hair, colored like Abydonian sand.

"Mommy wouldn't tell me what would happen when I got to Earth. She wouldn't tell me if I could live with you."

"Well, sweetie, Mommy did want to ask me if I wanted you, but there was no question. I want you. We haven't got approval to bring you home yet…" Jack begins.

"Actually, General Laundry dropped this off ten minutes ago," Daniel says, handing Jack a paper.

"What is it?" Grace asks.

"Do you know how to read?" he asks, shifting her onto his hip, and holding the paper in front of her.

She smiles looking at him, "It has my name, and Mommy's name, and your name on it, Daddy," she says, pointing to different parts of the paper.

"Good job, Grace. It's a birth certificate. It means we get to keep you," he says.

"We can go home now, Daddy?" she asks, bouncing in his arms. He finds himself suddenly grateful that Grace isn't a baby. He's already old. Old enough that a six-year-old bouncing in his arms is almost too much for him. In six years, it probably would be too much for him. He wants to be there for Grace when she grows up.

"Not quite yet. Mommy is buying a few things for you. You and I will hang out here until she comes," he explains.

"Shopping? Mommy is going shopping without me?" she asks, disappointed.

"We got ourselves a girly-girl?" he asks with a grin, "We can go shopping tomorrow. But Mommy is getting something that you need to have to drive with kids. Daddy has to put you down now," he says setting her on the floor.

Grace tilts her head at him, "You're old."

Daniel laughs.

Jack kneels down, "I am, honey. Mommy and Daddy, we were stupid. We could have had you a long time ago, Grace. For a while we decided to save the world instead of have our Gracie girl. But we decided we couldn't do that anymore. That," he touches her face, "Saving the world wasn't enough if we couldn't have you."

Daniel sniffles, and father and daughter turn to him. "Daniel's crying, Daddy," Grace says with a giggle.

Jack stands up, "Your parents wanted you that much too," he says to Daniel, hugging him.

"Now, little one, are you hungry?" he asks her.

"Yep, but Mommy doesn't like me to eat sweets. But you like cake," she says with eyes alight.

"You've been our daughter for half an hour, and you are already playing Daddy against Mommy," he grumbles.

"So, yes to the cake?" Grace asks.

"Yes, yes to the cake," Jacks says with a sigh, "I am such a sucker, I'm in trouble," he mutters to Daniel.

"We all are," Daniel says, "You wanna take the paper and pen with?"

"I drawed you a picture," Grace says, holding the paper so close to Jack's face that he can't see it.

He pulls it away so he can look at it. "Hey," he says with genuine admiration, "You drew a really good picture of a ship."

"I know, right," Daniel says.

"Ok, my little artist, let's go get some food. But you do have to eat something before the pie."

"Fries?" Grace says hopefully.

"You keep that up and it's going to be Brussels sprouts, my dear," he mutters.

Grace sticks out her lip in a pout.

Grace has never seen a car seat; in fact she didn't even know the word for it. But as soon as the car stopped, she found her way out of the car seat, and tried to run into the house. She rocked from foot to foot in front of the door. As soon as it was open, she ran into the spare room.

"Where is my room?" she asks in shock.

"What room, honey?" Sam asks following her.

"My room; it's 'posed to be here. Where are my toys, and clothes?" she turns to them, alarmed.

Sam glances at Jack, "Honey, we didn't know you were coming. We didn't know you existed. We're going to get you a room. For tonight, we have just a few things, and you can share a bed with Mommy and Daddy."

"If you didn't know I was coming, how could you wish for me so much?" Grace asks.

Sam kneels next to her, "Baby… we've been trying to have you ever since Daddy and I got married four years ago. We wanted you so much. Honey… two years ago, Mommy got some news… we thought we were never going to have you. It broke our hearts. We are going to have a room for you, I promise."

Jack smiles, "I think she'd like to go shopping, tomorrow. She's girly," he pronounces.

"I'm not surprised," she says, smiling at her daughter.

"I am."

"Yes, well you're also surprised when I act like a girl," Sam says with a grin as she picks up her daughter, "What Daddy doesn't understand is that he is outnumbered now, and this house is going to get very girly."

"Oh no!" Jack groans.

Sam and Grace laugh.

"Ok, Grace, let's stay we start the girly now and paint our fingernails before bedtime?" Sam asks.

"Sam, do you actually own finger nail polish?" Jack asks.

She rolls her eyes at her husband, "Come on honey, maybe we can paint Daddy's too."

"Hey, you got me things? Thor?" Grace asks.

Sam's mouth drops open, and she pulls a stuffed alien out of the shopping bag.

Grace grabs onto it, "Thor!" she exclaims, holding it tight to her.

"I'm going to give Cassie a call, and tell her about these new developments," Jack says, excusing himself in a hurry for the safety of his fingernails.

"No!" Grace screams, holding onto her mother's legs, "Please, Mommy, don't go! Don't leave me!" she screams.

"Hey, I'm right here, I'm going to be here the whole time. I'll take care of you," Jack assures her.

"Mommy, you can't go!" Grace repeats.

Jack can see that Sam is getting pretty shaken by the whole thing, and he figures that enough is enough. He pulls his daughter off his wife's legs and carries her over to the couch.

"Honey, you know that your mother and I love you very much, right?" he asks her.

Grace takes a long snot-moving sniffle before she nods her head.

"Ok, and you also know that we are looking out for you. So just tell us why you're so upset about the idea of Mommy leaving you, and we'll work out what to do about it."

"She's going to be gone," Grace pouts.

"Absolutely right, Mommy will be gone for a while. But she will come home," Jack says, smoothing his daughter's hair.

"I want her home all the time," Grace pouts.

"I get that. I do. But if Mommy didn't go in her space ship, she would be gone during the day. Sure she'd come back to us at night, but she wouldn't get to spend a whole week 24 hours a day with us like she did this last week. We're pretty lucky," Jack says.

"And you know why else you are lucky, Grace?" Sam says, sitting next to her.

Grace shakes her head.

"You get your Daddy every single day," Sam says with a grin. "He stays with you all the time! Did you know some little kids have to go to day care, and someone takes care of them while their Mommy and Daddy both work?"

"I want both of you," she mumbles.

"I know," Sam says, holding out her hands. Grace burrows into her side, and holds her for a long while, "I'm going to miss you," Sam says, with tears in her eyes.

"You'd better get going," Jack prompts, knowing that if this goodbye goes on much longer it is going to break the hearts of everyone involved.

Two months later, Sam arrives home for two weeks of leave while they make repairs on the ship. This time, for once, the leave was actually expected. So Jack and Grace planned a little surprise party for her return.

"I have a surprise for you as well," she says with a grin.

"What?" Jack asks.

"I'm getting transferred," Sam says with a huge grin on her face.

"Oh, no you don't! You are not going to switch jobs just because she threw a temper tantrum when you left!" he exclaims.

Sam smiles, "I didn't even request the transfer. But it is earth side, no more being apart," she says.

He nods for her to continue.

"And it comes with a promotion."

"Good, this family needed another General O'Neill," he says.

She makes a face at him, because she kept her own last name, and he knows it. Even though he keeps insisting on acting as if he took hers.

"I'm going to be running the SGC," she says.

"My wife is the man!" he exclaims.

Grace turns to him with a confused face.

"Sweetie," Sam says, bending down to her level, "Mommy got a new job. She's still going to be working long hours, but she isn't going to be going away anymore. She gets to stay on Earth."

Grace locks her arms around her mom's neck, and Sam stands up, holding her close. All those years ago when they first dreamt of Grace, she never imagined it could be this great.


End file.
